were now in a different mood, for “no rain had fallen in that province for three years before his arrival, wherefore a dreadful famine ensued which cruelly destroyed the people....  It is reported that very often, forty or fifty men, being spent with want, would go together to some precipice, or to the sea-shore, and there hand in hand perish by the fall, or be swallowed-up by the waves.”  (Ven.  Bede.)

The efforts of the missionary saint met with success.  The unprecedented sufferings of the people had been ignored by their tribal deities and the offer of a new faith was eagerly accepted.  The King had been converted, possibly in secret, before this.  The baptism of the leading chieftain was followed by the breaking of the terrible drought.  The fruits of the woods came to feed the bodies of those who had accepted the food of the spirit, and “the King being made pious and gentle by God, granted him (Wilfrid) his own town in which he lived, for a bishop’s see, with lands of 87 houses in Selesie afterwards added thereto, to the holy new evangelist and baptist who opened to him and all his people the way of everlasting life, and there he founded a monastery for a resting-place for his assembled brothers, which even to this day belongs to his servants.” (Eddi’s Life of Bishop Wilfrid.)

The monastery site was probably the same as that of the cathedral, now beneath the waves, about a mile east of the present Selsey church.

[Illustration:  FISHBOURNE MANOR.]

To explore the peninsula a start should be made at Appledram, a small village close to Chichester Channel and about two miles south-east of the city; here is a fine Early English church, on the south of which is an ancient farm-house, originally a tower built by one Renan in the reign of Edward II.  The King would not grant permission for its crenellation, Renan thereupon disposed of most of the materials and they were used to build the campanile at Chichester.  Footpaths lead across the meadows to Donnington where is another Early English church of but little interest.  A mile away on the banks of the disused Chichester and Arundel canal is the strangely named “Manhood End.”  This is a corruption of Mainwood, and refers to the great forest which once stretched from the Downs to the sea.  A rather dull walk westwards past Birdham to West Itchenor, a remote little place on the shores of the creek, is amply repaid by the fine views northwards up the Bosham channel, with the far-flung line of the Downs beyond. (A ferry can be taken from here which would make a short cut to Bosham or Fishbourne practicable.) Returning past the church with its interesting font, a footpath is taken to West Wittering and its very fine Transitional church, the most interesting ecclesiastical building in the Selsey Peninsula; note the two rude sculptures of the Annunciation and Resurrection at the ends of a canopied altar tomb; and a coffin lid with pastoral staff possibly of a “boy-bishop.”  We are now on that portion of the coast which approximates most nearly to the original spot, now beneath the waves, where the first colonists of Sussex landed.